Stallions back in regional soccer final

Friday

Just consider this: The last two times the Stallions have played Raleigh Charter in the NCHSAA 1-A East Regional final, Southwest has emerged victorious en route to a state title.

Those wins came in 2010 and last year.

This year, Southwest (11-8-2) is hoping to take a step closer to repeating history when the Stallions play Raleigh Charter (19-1) today at 5 p.m. in the regional final at WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary.

However, Southwest coach John Sweeney stresses the previous playoff matches between the Stallions and Phoenix don’t mean a thing this year.

“I don’t think it makes as much of a difference if you’re talking about year to year because players develop, new individuals joins the program, and teams try to do different things each year,” Sweeney said. “Obviously some of those girls have been around for several of those games.”

But so have some of the Southwest players. The Stallions have two seniors who have helped the program advance to the regional final four consecutive years.

“The big thing is we can’t get over confident because we have a couple of wins in the playoffs against them,” Sweeney said. “I would hope we wouldn’t because we have a loss in the regular season this year against them. We lost to them 2-1 at The Battle of the Beach in the beginning of March.”

So does playing the Carolina 12 Conference No. 1 Phoenix again help the Stallions’ chances? Likely not, Sweeney said.

“It was our third match and we were very disorganized and sloppy and I know we were missing players and Raleigh Charter was missing players,” Sweeney said. “It was a 2-1 game and one of their goals was a penalty kick. It sounds like it was a pretty tight match, but I’m not sure how much we can learn from looking at that game.”

Instead, Sweeney is concerned about his team. He wants the Stallions to continue playing the type of soccer they have played in the playoffs.

Coastal Plains Conference champion Southwest is coming off a 3-2 win over league rival Dixon.

“It’s going to be finishing the opportunities that we get,” Sweeney said of his team’s key to victory. “We know we are not going to get a lot of them.”

But while taking advantage of opportunities is important, Sweeney also said that Southwest’s backfield must also play well. Senior Faeth Wigfall leads the Stallions’ defense.

“Their left midfielder, Alexa Dyer, is a wonderful player and we saw that back in March,” Sweeney said. “She has 20 goals and 20 assists. We don’t want to give her a lot of open looks at the goal. We want to make sure we have smart pressure on her any time she touches the ball.”

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